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2008 Travel Grant Winners Say "Thanks"

9 June 2008

By Will Wakeling, SSP Grants and Scholarships Committee Chair

We invited this year's Travel Grant winners to give us a few words about their impressions of the meeting. As you can see below, they enjoyed meeting SSP members and learning about the multiple perspectives on scholarly publishing. If you have colleagues and friends who might be interested in submitting an application for the 2009 Travel Grant program, please make a note to yourself to check with SSP in February or March.

Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson (Student Travel Awardee), Arizona State University

I had a great time at the conference. It was really refreshing being with a group of people who understood what I did and had similar interests. Everyone was very interested in talking to the travel grant winners and encouraging. One of the things I found most interesting about the meeting and the Society was the way the library and publishing worlds intersect and seem poised to intersect more in the future. I think the most valuable thing I gained from the conference is the knowledge that publishing is expanding in many ways, not dying off, and that people in the industry seem eager to learn about new technologies and ways of communicating.

Phillip Roberts (Early-Career Travel Awardee), CABI

I thoroughly enjoyed attending the 30th SSP conference. I would like to thank everyone for their kindness and openness during the event and the SSP committee for organising an event that was full of both informative talks and networking time. The topics and standard of speaker were excellent and provoked a great deal of "food for thought" on return to the office. One of the key messages that I will be taking away from the event is the extension of scientific "content" reaching out more than the written word and the development of enriched content business models. I have made lots of good leads to follow up on and hope that future collaboration will develop from these. I would like to thank everyone again from the SSP and who attended for making the conference such a success.

Tracey Minzenmayer (Early-Career Travel Awardee), UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

The meeting was very different from what I was expecting. The sessions were less focused on technology and customer service than I had expected, and there were more case studies of people talking about what had worked or not worked for them. There were a number of excellent presenters on a wide variety of topics. The most useful part of the conference for me were the presentations on the Sermo and Nature Network online communities. Science is not a solitary activity, and there is a growing interest in online tools for collaboration. I'm looking forward to adding what I learned to the class I teach on social networking tools for scientists. Overall, I felt like attending this meeting gave me a better perspective on the concerns and important issues affecting publishers of academic materials. I want to thank the members of SSP for giving me the opportunity to meet them and to expand my knowledge about the publishing field.

Kaitlin Costello (Student Travel Awardee), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

I had anticipated a dynamic, engaging group of individuals from a variety of disciplines and work backgrounds willing to discuss the changing face of scholarly publishing, and the conference definitely met this expectation! Before attending the conference, I had hoped to meet people who work in the field that I am currently studying. I am very happy that I was able to interact with many people who work directly in my areas of interest, including digital preservation, institutional repositories, and Web archives.

The roundtable discussion at lunch on Friday was a fantastic opportunity. Meeting people who work in areas of digital preservation and hearing about their job experiences and interests was a highlight of the conference. I also enjoyed the plenary talk given by Pattie Maes on Just-in-Time Information. I am very interested in the topics she discussed and was pleased to hear them being presented in this forum. The panels I attended were all extremely interesting, especially the Thursday panel on Taxonomies and Folksonomies in Practice and the Friday panel on Copyright 2.0. I particularly liked the audience discussion at the Copyright 2.0 panel. Both of these panel discussions are directly relevant to my studies in Web archives, institutional repositories, and digital preservation at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois.

The roundtable discussion that I attended on Friday on the topic of digital preservation was a wonderful professional development opportunity. At the lunch, I met people who work in digital preservation, which I am studying and would like to pursue in my career. Another highlight of the trip was the opportunity to meet with and question my mentor, board member Heidi McGregor. Being paired with a mentor enhanced the experience of attending the conference and made me feel like a welcome and valued member of the SSP community. I also enjoyed meeting with the other travel grant awardees and discussing our varying experiences, both professional and academic.

The only thing that disappointed me about the annual meeting was that it was over so quickly. I would have liked the chance to meet more people and attend more panels and lectures, and I look forward to attending the annual meeting in the future.

Ann Medaille (Student Travel Awardee), University of North Texas

The most valuable information that I took away from the meeting was a deeper understanding of the ways that information delivery will be changing over the next few years. Since I am pursuing a career in librarianship, this information will help me to make good choices about the purchase of library materials and will help me deliver better services and instruction to patrons. I had a great time at the meeting, and it was fun to be in Boston when the weather was so gorgeous.

Eric Garner (Early-Career Grant Awardee), SAGE Publications

The SSP 30th Annual Meeting was a memorable experience. It felt special to be in an environment where professionals throughout the scholarly community come together to establish ways we can work together to ensure a successful future for scholarly publishing. The publishing climate is continuously changing, and the meetings opened my eyes to processes that are in place to help scholarly publishing meet the demands of the future. Will Wakeling was a great host—he welcomed the Travel Grant winners with open arms and showed us a good time. I felt right at home. Ray Fastiggi was also a great mentor, and I enjoyed the time I spent talking with him. By the end of the 30th Annual Meeting, I had a better idea of what’s in store for scholarly publishing and my role in helping it continue to flourish.

Martha Preddie (Student Travel Awardee), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Prior to attending the SSP meeting, I had very little practical knowledge about scholarly publishing, even though I have written a few journal articles. I came to the meeting with expectations of bridging this knowledge gap and gaining insights into the current application of new information technologies in the sphere of scholarly publishing, as well as implications, expectations, and possibilities for the future.

My expectations were well met from the start. In my initial encounter with fellow travel grant recipients at dinner in one of Boston’s Legal Seafood restaurants, the food for thought was as good as the food for nourishment. That night, Kaitlin’s sharing of her knowledge and experience working with institutional repositories, as well as the role that scholarly publishers play in this arena, was very insightful for me.

As a librarian, I appreciated the mixed panels of presenters from publishing and library fields. I observed that there were several congruencies in opinion from both sides. For example, it was heartening to hear that despite all the hype about folksonomies, there was a shared view that access to scholarly works is better facilitated by taxonomies, and that there is evidence of a shift toward this in some social bookmarking tools and through individual library-driven initiatives.

I truly enjoyed the meeting and the stimulating professional and social interactions that I experienced. A highpoint for me was the plenary session "Just-in-time Information" that featured breathtaking and mind-boggling experiments at MIT aimed at melting the seam between the digital and physical worlds.

The most valuable information I came away from the meeting with is the understanding that despite the costs and amid rapidly evolving technologies, publishers are committed to venturing into multifaceted modes of delivering scholarly content in order to meet the new ways in which people are accessing information. Likewise, librarians' role is to connect with users in any way possible and to be innovative in the use of technology to bring content to our clients.

Thanks Once Again to Our Sponsors

SSP is very grateful to the 2008 Travel Grant sponsors:

CrossRef
Inera
Fry Communications
Rockefeller University Press
SAGE Publications
American Psychological Association
Reprints Desk Inc.
Aries Systems Inc.
Systemslink